by Brian Thiem
“No,” Sinclair ordered.
“It’s either me or you,” said Olsen, as his left hand crept closer to the gun. “The Bus Bench Killer or Sergeant Sinclair. That’s how it’s supposed to end.”
Sinclair heard police radios coming across the parking lot. Then he stepped toward Olsen and, with all his might, kicked his arm, aiming at the shattered bone.
Olsen let loose a long, anguished scream and his hand released the Beretta.
With his foot, Sinclair hooked the gun toward him and kicked it clear. “This is how it ends. You and I are nothing alike.”
Chapter 66
The waitress cleared their plates and brought coffee. It was the first time Sinclair had seen Liz since the ambulance took her away three days ago. Their conversation over dinner had been cordial, but he sensed a divide as wide as the San Francisco Bay between them. In the candlelight, Sinclair could barely make out Liz’s injuries under her heavy makeup, but her eyes showed fatigue and stress. He’d been waiting for her to announce what was on her mind ever since he received a delivery of flowers and an expensive box of cigars at the office earlier that day. The note asked him to join her for a late dinner and closed with, Thanks for saving my life. I’ll always love you, Liz.
His final showdown with Olsen at the Golden State Motel three days earlier was still fresh on his mind. Once Lieutenant Maloney and the rest of the homicide unit arrived on scene and cleared him to leave, Sinclair had rushed to the hospital. The ER staff had taken Braddock downstairs for a CT scan, so he grabbed a nurse and inquired about Liz. The nurse said Liz had been examined, found to have no serious injuries, and signed herself out against medical advice. A few hours later, Sinclair sat alongside Braddock as she lay unconscious in ICU. He was staring at the TV on the wall when the five o’clock news came on, and he was shocked to see Liz sitting at the anchor desk. A dark bruise covered half her face, and her lower lip was so swollen she spoke with a lisp. She wore her battle wounds proudly, and Sinclair was sure it was the first time Liz ever declined hair and makeup before going on the air. She reported the harrowing details of her ordeal and heaped praise on him and Braddock for her rescue. She was on the ten o’clock news later that night and on a morning show Monday. They spoke several times on the phone, but she was too busy to meet. She flew to New York Monday night and appeared on Good Morning America Tuesday morning and another network talk show that afternoon.
Liz added cream to her coffee and slowly stirred it. “I’ve been offered a huge contract for an anchor-track position with CBS in Chicago.”
“That’s what you’ve always dreamed of.”
She smiled.
“Will you take it?”
“I already have. Movers arrive tomorrow and I fly out tomorrow night. I’m hot right now, and they want me in place right away to take advantage of it.”
“Congratulations. You earned it.” Sinclair only half meant it. Most of the homicide unit thought the DA’s office should have charged her criminally for what she did, and all were in agreement that any cop who did something that reckless would be fired. Sinclair wasn’t so sure. Monday morning, Chief Brown had told the Internal Affairs to initiate an investigation for disobeying his order to stay in the office, but like after the Alonzo Moore shooting, the media made Sinclair into a hero, and along with Liz, he became a national sensation. Brown called IAD a few hours later and told them to close the case. In a news conference that afternoon, he joined the tide of public opinion and praised Sinclair.
“None of this would have been possible without you,” Liz said. She pulled a tissue from her handbag and wiped her eyes.
Sinclair nodded and smiled.
“I need to get back. Prepare for the ten o’clock broadcast. They’re doing a farewell segment on me.”
Sinclair reached for his wallet.
“I already paid,” she said. “My new job comes with a credit card and expense account.”
Sinclair stood. “I’ll walk you out.”
“Finish your coffee.” She stood and wiped her eyes again. “I’ll lose it totally if I’m alone with you.”
Liz leaned in, kissed his cheek, and whispered in his ear, “I’ll always love you, Matt.”
He watched as she walked away, the sound of her clicking heels growing faint until she disappeared out the door. A wave of sadness came over him, but at the same time, he felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Chapter 67
Sinclair sipped from a lead crystal tumbler of Perrier and leaned back in the leather club chair. Walt poured another inch of Scotch for Maloney, Jankowski, and Sanchez and replaced the bottle on a mahogany corner bar.
“What was the name of this again?” asked Maloney.
“Aberlour,” said Walt. “It’s a single-malt from the Speyside region of Scotland. Mr. Towers discovered the eighteen-year-old Aberlour years ago when in Switzerland on business. He had several cases shipped home, and although he no longer drinks, he’ll be quite pleased to hear you enjoyed it.”
“I’m more of a beer drinker, but this is good shit.” Jankowski drained his glass in two gulps. “Sinclair says you can even smoke cigars in this room.”
Walt flipped a switch by the door and pointed to a vent high on the wood-paneled wall. “Yes, the library is equipped with a high-volume exhaust fan, and if you’re so inclined, we can return here after dinner for cigars.”
Earlier in the week, Sinclair had moved into the guesthouse, located across the mansion’s back lawn behind the pool. It was bright, airy, and casual—a stark contrast to the formality of the main house.
Maloney removed a leather-bound Hemingway novel from a bookshelf, fingered through the pages, and put it back in its place.
“Where did we leave off with the story?” Walt asked.
“Cathy is lying in the doorway after being hit with two bullets,” said Maloney. “And Matt just kicked the gun away from the Bus Bench Killer.”
“I thought for sure she’d been shot,” said Sinclair.
Braddock wiggled the fingers of her left hand through the cast that covered her arm from the elbow to the knuckles and set her glass of Perrier on an end table. “I was lying there, wanting to tell Matt I’m okay, so he can focus on Olsen rather than worry about me, but I was in a daze. I followed Matt through the door, but not being a super-duper ex-SWAT cop, I was a bit slow and stepped into the doorway just as two bullets came that way. Thank God, he didn’t go for a head shot. Both rounds hit me square in the chest. Like I took two punches from a heavyweight champ. They knocked me off my feet, and I tried to break my fall with my left hand.”
“Which didn’t work very well, because not only did she break her wrist when she landed, but she still smacked her head on the doorjamb,” said Sinclair.
“So Matt was thinking that I was down because I was shot, and I didn’t even know where I was at because my brain’s rattled.”
“The Monday morning Chronicle reported that Matt fired eight shots into him right through the wall,” said Walt.
“Rumors like that are how legends are born.” Sinclair grinned. “Only three rounds hit him, but it was enough. The most serious one went through his right lung, but the paramedics and ACH ER did their magic and saved him.”
Braddock leaned back on the sofa. “So there I was, still in a daze, when every cop in Oakland arrives. They dragged me outside, stripped off my vest, and started unbuttoning my shirt to look for bullet holes. I was thinking, Hey, I’m a girl, show some respect. My chest hurt so bad I was sure the rounds either went right through the vest or missed it. After they did a CT scan, the docs were amazed there was no internal damage or broken ribs from the blunt trauma. Only the giant bruises that are still purple and yellow. While a dozen officers were taking care of me, others swooped inside, handcuffed Olsen, and wrapped Liz in a blanket. She was pretty much in shock, so they sent her away in the third ambulance.”
“The officers handcuffed a wounded man with a broken arm?” said Walt.
> “I know it might sound barbaric,” said Maloney. “But that’s standard protocol. The aftermath of a shooting scene is chaotic. Just because a man’s been shot, it doesn’t mean he’s no longer able to fight.”
“It sounds awfully painful, but it makes a lot of sense,” said Walt. “Any chance of this guy getting off?”
“There’s a ton of physical evidence that ties him to the murders,” said Sinclair. “And with what we found in his apartment and the statement that he taped for Channel Six, the trial will be a slam dunk.”
“Lethal injection is made for assholes like him,” said Jankowski.
“Even if the jury decides on the death penalty, with all the appeals these guys are entitled to, he’ll still be occupying a prison cell when I retire,” said Sinclair.
“Has the DA made a decision on the officer-involved shooting yet?” asked Sanchez.
“They weren’t comfortable with Matt kicking him,” said Maloney. “It never looks good when a cop puts the boots to a man who’s down—but they understood it was better than shooting him.”
When Sinclair stood over Olsen in the motel room, it had felt like déjà vu. Despite what both Moore and Olsen had said, Sinclair knew he wasn’t a killer. None of what Olsen had done mattered at that moment: not the lives he destroyed; not Braddock lying in the doorway; not Liz, bloodied and cowering in the corner; not whether a jury would convict him or set him free; not even Olsen’s threats to kill Liz and Braddock. Sinclair realized that the difference with Olsen was that he didn’t need to kill him.
“It still doesn’t make sense,” said Braddock. “He decides to kill innocent people because doctors didn’t magically cure his daughter.”
“I learned a lot about Olsen over the past week,” said Sinclair. “NYPD came through and did extensive interviews with Horowitz and the Arquette Family. Olsen had met Jane when he was a cameraman doing a documentary with a BBC team in Africa and Jane worked there with the Peace Corps. She came home pregnant with Samantha. Jane’s family was against her marrying him, and Jane didn’t want to upset her father or risk losing her multimillion-dollar trust fund, so she had the baby, and she and Olsen lived together without marrying. He got a job as a photojournalist in New York City but never mingled with the Arquettes.
“When Samantha died, Jane went into a deep depression. Olsen was convinced that if the man that raped her was brought to justice and the doctors who failed to save her were slammed in a lawsuit, Jane would feel a sense of closure and could move forward. We’ll never know if that would’ve mattered to her. When Jane committed suicide, Olsen blamed us. After her death, the family learned that she’d rewritten her will and left her estate to Olsen, which pissed off old man Arquette, but he wanted to keep everything quiet to avoid the social embarrassment, so he reached out to NYPD to ensure the suicide investigation was closed and buried. That’s why no one from NYPD would talk to us initially.
“Olsen found Channel Six was advertising for a part-time cameraman and figured that was a good way for him to move west and dig into Samantha’s case. His friend, Darryl Tyson, was in Africa on a project and gave him the keys to his apartment. His coworkers knew him only as Eric, and no one had any suspicion he was connected to any of this. Once we arrested him and the story came out, a bunch of people came forward and told us that Olsen had nosed around in Berkeley, digging into Samantha’s rape.”
“I guess he didn’t get anywhere with it,” said Braddock.
“No, and maybe that’s when he decided to kill the family members of those he blamed for Jane’s suicide and devised the plan to use the peace medallions and the bus bench to play with us.”
“How was he able to time it so that you’d get assigned his first murder?” asked Braddock.
“He volunteered to work whenever Liz was scheduled. It seems that Liz wasn’t the most popular reporter among the cameramen, so when she went out on assignment, no one objected when he accompanied her. She talked to him about how my arbitration was progressing, and he was her cameraman when she reported I was returning to homicide. She even mentioned to him when I went back on standby, so he planned his first killing to be sure I got it.”
“It’s still hard to fathom someone killing all those innocent people for revenge,” said Braddock.
“Murder isn’t a rational act,” said Sinclair. “There’s only so much we can understand.”
Sinclair had learned years ago to stop trying to make sense out of the actions of murderers. When he had met with the DA last week to review Olsen’s murder cases for charging, the DA lamented about the difficulty the prosecution would have trying to make sense of the killings for twelve people on jury. But Sinclair knew it wasn’t his responsibility to make sense out of their deaths.
All he could do when he returned to the office was take the number from Samantha’s case packet and pin it on the board next to the numbers representing Zachary, Susan, Carol, and Melissa. Then he took a marker from Connie’s desk and drew a red line through each of them.
Acknowledgments
It’s been a long journey from the evening in 2008 when I sat in a fiction writing class and thought it might be fun to write a novel. A special thanks to all the people who helped along the way, from the writing teachers who encouraged me years ago when writing a novel was just a dream; to those in my writing groups who critiqued my attempts at writing and urged me to continue; to the amazing teachers, mentors, and fellow students in the MFA Program at Western Connecticut State University who patiently helped this old cop and soldier transform into a writer; to the cop-writers who showed me it was possible to write something beyond police reports; and to those police officers, reporters, and others who provided input and guidance that helped make this story and its characters as authentic as possible: Andy Alexander, Holly Azevedo, John Bates, Michael Capuzzo, Richard Cass, Jane Cleland, Brian Clements, Elizabeth Cohen, Rick Corbo, Ann Marie Cannon, Sharon Charter, Debra Devins, Roland De Wolk, Donna Doble-Brown, Pamela Fitzgerald, Lauren Gallo, David Griffith, Phylis Iqbal, Dana Jenkins, Jeff Joorfetz, Joe Klemczewski, Alissa Kocer, Jack Lundquist, Derrick McCluskey, Patty Melara, Tim Nolan, Dan Pope, Lynn Paris-Purtle, Ian Peterkin, Jeanette Ronson, Arthur Roth, DeShea Rushing, Ron Samul, Becca Simas, Don Snyder, John Taylor, Rachael Van Sloten, Karen Veazey, and Tim Weed.
My deepest thanks to my amazing agent, Paula Munier; my supremely talented editor, Matthew Martz; his super assistant, Nike Power; and the rest of the team at Crooked Lane Books for your guidance, support, and encouragement.